Obama's Pak-Afghan Policies

[pkpatriotic]

Obama phones Zardari, assures US support to Pakistan
Saturday, November 08, 2008

WASHINGTON: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has said Saturday that US deeply yearns to extend full support to Pakistan to overcome financial crisis as well as war on terrorism on a telephonic talk to President Zardai from Washington.

President-elect said both Pakistan and United States share long lasting friendship and hoped to eradicate terrorism from the region with Pakistan support.

Also, he added that US longed to establish better mutual relationship between both the allies on terror war to settle down differences due to US strikes in Pakistan.

 

[pkpatriotic]

Obama to Explore New Approach in Afghanistan War
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 11, 2008; A01

The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan -- including possible talks with Iran -- and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.

President-elect Barack Obama also intends to renew the U.S. commitment to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a priority the president-elect believes President Bush has played down after years of failing to apprehend the al-Qaeda leader. Critical of Bush during the campaign for what he said was the president's extreme focus on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan, Obama also intends to move ahead with a planned deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops there.

The emerging broad strokes of Obama's approach are likely to be welcomed by a number of senior U.S. military officials who advocate a more aggressive and creative course for the deteriorating conflict. Taliban attacks and U.S. casualties this year are the highest since the war began in 2001.

Some military leaders remain wary of Obama's pledge to order a steady withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, to be completed within 16 months -- an order advisers say Obama is likely to give in his first weeks in office. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called a withdrawal timeline "dangerous." Others are distrustful of a new administration they see as unschooled in the counterinsurgency wars that have consumed the military for the past seven years.

But conversations with several Obama advisers and a number of senior military strategists both before and since last Tuesday's election reveal a shared sense that the Afghan effort under the Bush administration has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy -- rather than a stable nation that rejects al-Qaeda and Islamist extremism and does not threaten U.S. interests. None of those who discussed the subject would speak on the record, citing sensitivities surrounding the presidential transition and the war itself.

As Obama begins to formulate his Afghan war policy, some senior military strategists have begun to question the U.S. commitment to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is expected to run for reelection next year but is widely considered weak and ineffective. Some European and NATO officials have suggested that an assembly of tribal elders should select the country's next leader, an idea the State Department has rejected.

Obama advisers have emphasized that a sharper focus on al-Qaeda does not mean pulling back on the Afghan ground war. Obama called early in the campaign for deploying two or three additional U.S. combat brigades to Afghanistan. Bush has already approved such an increase, although the timing of the deployments, likely to begin next spring, depends on the drawdown of forces from Iraq.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mullen, frustrated by the performance of NATO allies whose troops make up more than half the total foreign force in Afghanistan, have already planned for a more overt and forceful U.S. leadership role in the war, as well as more direct involvement by U.S. forces in fighting the Taliban in southern and western Afghanistan.

Some NATO military officials said enhanced U.S. leadership would be welcome, as long as it was not seen as a "takeover bid," said one senior European officer whose country has troops fighting as part of the NATO coalition in Afghanistan. While the U.S. military has long criticized some NATO members for lacking combat zeal and expertise in Afghanistan, many European officers resent what they see as U.S. arrogance.

The NATO officer suggested that Obama, whose election was greeted with wide approval in Europe, may have more success than Bush in persuading other alliance members to increase their fighting forces in Afghanistan. "I think you'll find the new president would then be able to persuade a number of European nations who have not liked this administration's way of doing business to come in behind them," he said.

At Mullen's direction, the map of the Afghanistan battle space is being redrawn to include the tribal regions of western Pakistan. U.S. military and intelligence leaders have delivered forceful messages to Pakistani officials on the need to step up attacks against Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in their territory.

Obama, advisers said, plans to intensify the U.S. military and intelligence focus on al-Qaeda and bin Laden. Intelligence officials say the search is already as intensive as ever, even as they emphasize that the decentralized al-Qaeda network would remain a threat without him. Bush administration officials have publicly played down the importance of a single individual in the broad sweep of their anti-terrorism offensive.

One week after the election, the Obama team is far from fleshing out how it will bring bin Laden closer to the forefront of the U.S. counterterrorism agenda, both rhetorically and substantively. Although Obama last week received his first high-level intelligence briefing as president-elect, members of his national security transition teams are still studying briefing materials the Bush administration has prepared for them. They have yet to fully examine available military and intelligence resources and how they are currently being used, and have not yet plotted their diplomatic approach to Pakistan, where U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden is hiding.

While emphasizing the importance of continuing U.S. operations against Pakistan-based Taliban fighters who attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the incoming administration intends to remind Americans how the fight against Islamist extremists began -- on Sept. 11, 2001, before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars -- and to underscore that al-Qaeda remains the nation's highest priority. "This is our enemy," one adviser said of bin Laden, "and he should be our principal target."

Obama said during the campaign that his administration would explore talks with countries such as Iran and Syria, rejecting bedrock Bush policy and rhetoric that some U.S. military officials believe may have outlived their usefulness.

Iran, on Afghanistan's western border, has played a mixed role over the years, at times indirectly cooperating with U.S. objectives and at times assisting the extremists. The Bush administration has kept Tehran at arm's length, but "as we look to the future, it would be helpful to have an interlocutor" to explore shared objectives, said one senior U.S. military official. The Iranians "don't want Sunni extremists in charge of Afghanistan any more than we do," he said.

Advisers also said Obama is open to supporting discussions between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban, a nascent effort of which the State Department has been fairly dismissive. Although it supports the terms the Afghan government has laid down -- abandoning violence and accepting the Afghan constitution -- the Bush administration sees "no serious indication from anybody on the Taliban side that they're interested," Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher said. "They keep hijacking buses, killing people and chopping their heads off. These are not people who have shown any serious desire to negotiate."

But the Pentagon, at least rhetorically, has left the door open wider. Senior officers describe a substantial portion of Taliban foot soldiers as more opportunistic than ideologically committed. Gates has spoken openly about the possibility of reconciliation, saying, "at the end of the day, that's how most wars end. . . . That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us." Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said during a recent visit to Washington that the idea of "reconciliation, I think, is appropriate, and we'll be there to provide support within our mandate."

At the White House, presidential adviser Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute is leading an interagency assessment of the Afghanistan war, scheduled to be finished this month, that administration officials said will focus on enhancing support for provincial and local governments and building the Afghan police. Lute plans to travel to Brussels to summarize the review for NATO.

At the Pentagon, Mullen is overseeing an Afghanistan and Pakistan transition strategy and force-structure review by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former Iraq commander sworn in last month as head of the U.S. Central Command, is drawing up plans for his wider new responsibilities, which include Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mullen and Petraeus will remain in place when the Bush administration's civilian policymakers leave office in January. Petraeus, a senior Defense official said, has indicated he agrees with Obama's more regional approach to Afghanistan and welcomes "a debate about goals and how much is enough" in terms of nation-building there. "We are not going to seize the flag there and go home to a victory parade," this official said.

 

[Imran Khan]

Obama must revise Pakistan policy, US expert warns against continued use of force WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (APP): A veteran American foreign affairs expert, Eric Margolis, has advised President-elect Barack Obama to adopt a new policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan with a thrust on exploring political solution to the conflict and warned that prolonging the Bush administration’s over reliance on force risks destabilizing the entire region.
The syndicated writer and journalist, who has been a consistent critic of US actions and air strikes on Afghan villages and into Pakistani territory, pleaded a deeper understanding of the security imperatives in the region. He pointed out that India has widespread intelligence activity in Afghanistan that causes concerns in Pakistan.

“Until we bring the Pushtoon people and the Taliban and give them a share of the political power, there will be no stability in Afghanistan and this war will go on endlessly,” he said Friday in an interview with a US TV channel while discussing prospects and pitfalls for American policy in the region.

He deliberated on a host of issues in the light of his latest book “American Raj : Liberation or Domination.”

Margolis argued that the Afghan war cannot be won militarily and the Obama administration must revise US policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Even the Secretary General of NATO has said that there is no military solution to this conflict. There is only a political solution,” he stated.

“If we keep charging ahead “and I think the Bush Administration’s policy has been completely wrong-handed. To sustain the war in Afghanistan, which we should not have been fighting in the first place, it sustained an ugly dictatorship in Pakistan, which faulted all our claims about supporting democracy,” he added.

Asked what advice he would give to the new US leader Obama, he answered, “I will say: Mr President! This war has no military solution. You must find a diplomatic settlement to it. You should continue the political talks that have already started under the Saudi auspices.

You’ve got to find some way. You painted yourself into the corner even before you got into the White House by announcing we are going to kill (Osama) bin Laden, we’re going to attack Pakistan, if necessary, and we are going to send 15 to 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan. I’ll say you are leaving yourself no maneuver room here.

You should be starting, at least, through may be the British, may be the French, or Canadians to start a process of talks with Taliban not to divide Taliban as now being proposed, but to deal in a genuine negotiation to try to find a settlement to the war.” On implications of the Indian presence in Afghanistan he said.

“The Indians are very active in Afghanistan. They have their intelligence agents everywhere. They are trying to turn Afghanistan into an Indian protectorate. They are causing great consternation in Pakistan.”

He went on to speak of worst case scenarios in the nuclearized region, if India feels tempted to intervene in Pakistan in case Pakistan is pushed to instability as a result of lingering Afghan conflict. Margolis rejected the possibility of militants getting hold of nuclear weapons.

His book ‘American Raj’ explores the origins of the mistrust between the West and many of the world’s Muslims - and how to resolve it. He stresses that the violence directed against the West by a small minority of people is not religiously motivated but has political reasons.

Margolis takes readers on a journey across the political and cultural landscape of the Muslim world.

He contends the Muslim world’s anger is rooted, first, in the decades of colonial control of the Middle East by Western nations, and then by the continuing influence leaders in the United States and other Western governments have sought to exert over the rulers of the region’s Muslim states.

Margolis recounts how many of these rulers have been dictators and how their undemocratic and often oppressive governments have sparked public hostility toward their Western patrons and toward America in particular.

Margolis says he wrote ‘American Raj’ to help Americans understand why the Muslim world often seems hostile to the United States.

“I stepped back into early 19th century and showed the steady progression of resistance in the Muslim world to Western colonialism - first European colonialism and then the domination by the West - and I am trying to put the context of violent groups in the Muslim world in a context of resistance to occupation rather than as being motivated by religion, as certain people in the U.S. claim,” Margolis says.


Associated Press Of Pakistan ( Pakistan's Premier NEWS Agency )

 

[fatman17]

US-PAKISTAN: Obama-Tied Think Tank Calls for "Dramatic" Shift

By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (IPS) - A think tank closely tied to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama is calling for a "dramatic strategic shift" in Washington's policy towards Pakistan, one designed to both strengthen civilian institutions and promote an effective counter-insurgency against al Qaeda and indigenous Islamist extremists in the tribal areas along the Afghan border who increasingly threaten the country's stability.

In a report released here Monday, the Centre for American Progress (CAP) is also urging Washington to pursue its goals in Pakistan as part of a broader multilateral effort and a regional strategy designed to address Islamabad's security concerns with Afghanistan and India.

"The United States needs to make a shift from a reactive, transactional, short-term approach that is narrowly focused on bilateral efforts," according to the 71-page report, "Partnership for Progress".

"Instead, a more proactive, long-term strategy should seek to advance stability and prosperity inside Pakistan through a multilateral, regional approach," it argued, adding that Pakistan "will pose one of the greatest foreign policy challenges for the incoming Obama administration."

The report, the product of a year-long study that included consultations with a U.S.-Pakistan Working Group consisting of 33 of Washington's top Pakistan specialists, is likely to be regarded as a bellwether for where the Obama administration will take U.S. policy.

John Podesta, White House chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton and CAP's president and CEO since its founding in 2001, has headed Obama's presidential transition team since long before the election, and at least two of the report's four co-authors -- CAP's Brian Katulis, a Middle East and South Asia specialist, and Lawrence Korb, a senior Pentagon official under Ronald Reagan -- are likely to get senior posts in the new administration.

And while the report itself represented only the views of its co-authors, a large number of Working Group members, such as Vice President-Elect Joseph Biden's top South Asia staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jonah Blank and former Clinton National Security Council aide Bruce Riedel, have been among the Obama campaign's key advisers on the region.

The report comes amid palpably growing concern here about the situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan where what the report calls a "strengthening, multi-headed adaptive network of extremists comprised of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and affiliated indigenous militant groups" has made unprecedented gains seven years after they were evicted from Afghanistan by U.S. airpower and the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.

Since then, Washington has spent more than 11 billion dollars on aid to Islamabad, almost all of which went to the Pakistani Army, in hopes that the military-led government of former President Pervez Musharraf would fully cooperate with U.S. efforts to prevent the Taliban and other radical groups from returning to Afghanistan.

But not only have the Taliban and its allies made a strong comeback in Afghanistan over the past two years -- in part due to the safe havens they have enjoyed in the tribal regions on the Pakistani side of the border -- but their brand of radicalism has spread outward from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where al Qaeda's leadership is believed to be based, into the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and beyond even into Punjab and other parts of Pakistan's heartland.

Adding to concerns over the nuclear-armed country's stability is the state of its economy. Even before the financial crisis that hit world credit markets in mid-September, Pakistan's economy was suffering serious inflation that put food and fuel prices beyond the reach of many Pakistanis, provoking street protests and riots in some cities.

With rapidly depleting foreign reserves, the government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari was forced just last weekend to agree to a two-year, 7.6-billion-dollar loan by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Conditions for the loan are likely to include reductions in government subsidies on basic commodities that could, in turn, provoke greater unrest and an even greater boost for radical forces.

As bad as the current situation looks, however, the CAP report noted a series of favourable developments that could help redress the situation, beginning with the fact that, unlike the Musharraf regime, the new government -- the product of democratic elections last February -- is seen as legitimate by most Pakistanis and thus has "a greater potential for representing and mobilizing Pakistan's population toward fighting militancy and strengthening its governmental institutions..."

Similarly, the advent of a new U.S. administration headed by Obama could reduce some of the strains created by the administration of President George W. Bush whose strong backing for Musharraf made him deeply unpopular in Pakistan, according to polls taken over the past two years.

In addition, other countries appear more inclined to help Pakistan deal with its economic problems, according to the report. The Friends of Pakistan Group, which consists of the European Union (EU), the United Nations, China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Canada, Turkey, Australia, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- which hosted the Group's meeting in Abu Dhabi Monday -- appears poised to offer additional assistance.

That willingness extends even to the U.S. Congress, which is likely to take up a bipartisan proposal introduced earlier this year by Biden and co-sponsored by Obama to provide 7.5 billion dollars in economic and development aid to Pakistan over the next five years.

"This legislation lays the groundwork for a new strategy in which the United States seeks a partnership with the people of Pakistan and not just a military expected to cooperate with American security aims," the report argues.

In addition to providing much more non-military aid, the report calls for Washington to recognise the limitations of its influence in Pakistan and move toward a multilateral approach, a direction which the Bush administration has already begun to take through the Friends Group and other initiatives.

"At this point in time, Pakistan's perceptions of the United States are so dismal that efforts to pursue change in Pakistan with the United States in the lead may automatically discredit the effort," according to the report.

Military aid should also continue but be channeled through civilian institutions, according to the report, which stressed that Washington should be as transparent as possible about the aid it provides.

Washington will also have to strike a balance between short-term measures such as its increasingly frequent air strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban targets on Pakistani soil and its long-term goal of enhancing the credibility and effectiveness of Pakistan's civilian leadership and institutions.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the U.S. and Islamabad reached a "tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in the border area. Under that understanding, the U.S. government would not comment on such attacks while Islamabad will be expected to complain about them. The agreement followed a cross-border attack by U.S. Special Forces that drew especially harsh criticism from the Pakistani government and army.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy, and particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at LobeLog.com.

 

[fatman17]

Military Action May Sometimes Be Moral and Constitutional, But Not Smart

by Ivan Eland

President-elect Barack Obama – showing the obligatory toughness toward foreign "evildoers" needed (especially by Democrats) in American political campaigns – pledged to use the American military to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Of all people, his hawkish rival, Senator John McCain, who supported the unprovoked US invasion and occupation of Iraq, criticized Obama's approach toward Pakistan as unnecessarily incendiary.

McCain's criticism of Obama's proposed tactics, however, was undermined by the outgoing Bush administration's same policy. The administration has been sending unpiloted drones deeper and deeper into Pakistani territory to attack suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban targets and has, on at least one occasion, used heliborne US Special Forces to launch a ground attack on such sites within Pakistan.

So this policy has at least some bipartisan endorsement. It also appears to have some moral sanction resulting from the right to retaliate against the perpetrators and enablers of the September 11 attacks on the United States. But the real question is whether such reflexively aggressive measures are smart policy. For the answer, some enlightenment can be gained from examining the actions of past presidents.

First, let's examine counterproductive combative actions of a president with a godlike reputation (Abraham Lincoln) and then a much more effective response from a perceived incompetent president (Jimmy Carter).

Upon taking office in early 1861, Lincoln admittedly faced the harsh reality that many Southern states had already seceded from the union and that South Carolina threatened Fort Sumter, the only remaining federal fort in the South. When Lincoln assumed office, the fort, located on an island off South Carolina's coast, was running low on food, and South Carolinians had fired on prior resupply ships during the prior Buchanan administration. Mirroring Northern public opinion at the time, Lincoln's top military advisers – including Winfield Scott, one of the greatest generals in US history – believed that the fort was militarily inconsequential and advocated for its abandonment. Lincoln knew full well that any further resupply of the fort would probably mean war. Nevertheless, the federal naval commander on the scene at the fort, echoed by other government officials, concluded that Lincoln ordered the fort to be provided with more food, but not ammunition, so that South Carolina "should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread."

It seems clear that Lincoln wanted to provoke a war that he erroneously believed would be a short-lived affair and to blame Southerners for starting it. Retrospectively, the massive and bloody Civil War that ensued – still casualty-wise, the worst war in US history – has been deemed worthwhile because it freed the slaves. Of course, when Lincoln provoked the conflict, he had no such goal and was merely trying to keep Southern states from seceding to fulfill the self-determination spoken of in the US Declaration of Independence.

Only when military bungling and the unpopularity of the conflict's carnage threatened the Northern cause did Lincoln change the war's goal to freeing the slaves – largely to shore up its popular support by making it a moral crusade and to keep Britain and France from recognizing the Southern Confederacy.

Lincoln most likely had a constitutional right to put down an insurgency, especially after he maneuvered the South into foolishly firing on the fort first. Yet the more important question remains: Should he have provoked the war?

Slavery was a vile and morally atrocious institution. However, most other countries had already peacefully ended slavery, and Lincoln himself had earlier advocated compensated emancipation, which would have paid Southerners to free their slaves. In the end, a meaningful attempt to do this would have lost less lives and money than starting a cataclysmic Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 Americans and left national scars that remain today. Moreover, the war only nominally freed the slaves and eventually resulted in a violent Southern backlash against "freed" slaves in the form of the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups.

Lincoln could have learned something from Jimmy Carter. In late 1979, Iranians took US diplomats hostage in Iran. Although Carter had a moral right to militarily retaliate against Iran for attacking the US embassy – technically US soil – he wisely avoided this option. Although he did attempt a failed rescue, an outright attack would have likely resulted in the hostages being murdered. Unlike his successor Ronald Reagan's response to US hostages being held in Lebanon, Carter refused to pay Iran ransom for a hostage release and lost his bid for reelection in part because the hostages had not been freed. On the day that Carter left office, the hostages were safely released. Although Carter and Lincoln both had the right to use military force, Carter was the wiser of the two men for avoiding it.

Obama would do well to learn the lessons of his predecessors and avoid the reflexive inclination to prove his strength by attacking Pakistan. The need for a young and inexperienced new president to avoid appearing weak resulted in John F. Kennedy's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and consequent Cuban Missile Crisis. These acts were performed for no strategic reason and nearly caused the world's nuclear incineration.

Since September 11, al-Qaeda has become more decentralized, thus rendering its central leadership less dangerous to the United States. Although the president-elect should keep pressuring the Pakistani government to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and crew and up the bounty on the heads of the group's leadership, the US occupation of Afghanistan and attacks into Pakistan are fueling the diffuse radical Islamism around the world that is leading to increased terrorism. Thus, Obama should avoid knee jerk US military responses that have become all too common and counterproductive and instead adopt a smarter policy of restraint.

Antiwar.com Pledge Drive

 

[Munir]

I am more curious how he stands to US India nuclear realtionship and the destruction of NPT.

 

[S-2]

"I am more curious how he stands to US India nuclear realtionship and the destruction of NPT."

Don't you have to sign the NPT in order to withdraw and thus jeopardize it's relevance? As such, wouldn't signatories such as Iran pose the greater risk- both legally and practically?

Has India ever been suspected of proliferation activities? If so, when and by whom?

Thanks.

 

[Vinod2070]

Obama voted for the bill.

There are no mysteries that are in the waiting. No need to wait with bated breath.

 

[roadrunner]

Obama phones Zardari, assures US support to Pakistan
Saturday, November 08, 2008

WASHINGTON: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has said Saturday that US deeply yearns to extend full support to Pakistan to overcome financial crisis as well as war on terrorism on a telephonic talk to President Zardai from Washington.

President-elect said both Pakistan and United States share long lasting friendship and hoped to eradicate terrorism from the region with Pakistan support.

Also, he added that US longed to establish better mutual relationship between both the allies on terror war to settle down differences due to US strikes in Pakistan.

Sounds good. Say you'll bomb it 6 months before, then say you want to be best friends. No doubts there's not really any policy.

 

[fatman17]

Sounds good. Say you'll bomb it 6 months before, then say you want to be best friends. No doubts there's not really any policy.

its called politics!

 

[fatman17]

Op-Ed Columnist

The Pakistan Test

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: November 22, 2008

Islamabad, Pakistan


Barack Obama’s most difficult international test in the next year will very likely be here in Pakistan. A country with 170 million people and up to 60 nuclear weapons may be collapsing.

Reporting in Pakistan is scarier than it has ever been. The major city of Peshawar is now controlled in part by the Taliban, and this month alone in the area an American aid worker was shot dead, an Iranian diplomat kidnapped, a Japanese journalist shot and American humvees stolen from a NATO convoy to Afghanistan.

I’ve been coming to Pakistan for 26 years, ever since I hid on the tops of buses to sneak into tribal areas as a backpacking university student, and I’ve never found Pakistanis so gloomy. Some worry that militants, nurtured by illiteracy and a failed education system, will overrun the country or that the nation will break apart. I’m not quite that pessimistic, but it’s very likely that the next major terror attack in the West is being planned by extremists here in Pakistan.

“There is real fear about the future,” notes Ahmed Rashid, whose excellent new book on Pakistan and Afghanistan is appropriately titled “Descent Into Chaos.”

The United States has squandered more than $10 billion on Pakistan since 9/11, and Pakistani intelligence agencies seem to have rerouted some of that to Taliban extremists. American forces periodically strike militants in the tribal areas, but people from those areas overwhelmingly tell me that these strikes just antagonize tribal leaders and make them more supportive of the Taliban.

One man described seeing Pashtuns in tribal areas throwing rocks in helpless frustration at the American aircraft flying overhead.

President Asif Ali Zardari seems overwhelmed by the challenges and locked in the past. Incredibly, he has just chosen for his new cabinet two men who would fit fine in a Taliban government.

One new cabinet member, Israr Ullah Zehri, defended the torture-murder of five women and girls who were buried alive (three girls wanted to choose their own husbands, and two women tried to protect them). “These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” Mr. Zehri said of the practice of burying independent-minded girls alive.

Then there is Pakistan’s new education minister, Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered him arrested for allegedly heading a local council that decided to solve a feud by taking five little girls and marrying them to men in an enemy clan. The girls were between the ages of 2 and 5, according to Samar Minallah, a Pakistani anthropologist who investigated the case (Mr. Bijarani has denied involvement).

While there are no easy solutions for the interlinked catastrophes unfolding in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there are several useful steps that we in the West can take to reduce the risk of the region turning into the next Somalia.

First, we should slow the financial flow to Pakistan’s government and military. If the government wants to stop the Talibanization of Pakistan, its greatest need isn’t money but the political will to stop sheltering Taliban leaders in the city of Quetta.

Second, we should cut tariffs on Pakistani agricultural and manufactured products to boost the economy and provide jobs. We should also support China on its planned export-processing zone to create manufacturing jobs in Pakistan.

Third, we should push much harder for a peace deal in Kashmir — including far more pressure on India — because Kashmir grievances empower Pakistani militants.

Fourth, let’s focus on education. One reason the country is such a mess today is that half of all Pakistanis are illiterate.

In the southern Punjab a couple of days ago, I dropped in on a rural elementary school where only one teacher had bothered to show up that day. He was teaching the entire student body under a tree, in part because the school doesn’t have desks for the first three grades.

One happy note: I visited a school run by a California-based aid group, Developments in Literacy, which represents a successful American effort to fight extremism. DIL is financed largely by Pakistani-Americans trying to “give back,” and it runs 150 schools in rural Pakistan, teaching girls in particular.

Tauseef Hyat, the Islamabad-based executive director of DIL, notes that originally the plan was to operate just primary schools, but then a group of 11-year-old girls threatened to go on hunger strike unless DIL helped them continue their education in high school. Ms. Hyat caved, and some of those girls are now studying to become doctors.

Mr. Obama should make his first presidential trip to Pakistan — and stop at a DIL school to remind Pakistan’s army and elites that their greatest enemy isn’t India but illiteracy.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog Opinion - Nicholas D. Kristof Blog - NYTimes.com, and join me on Facebook at Nicholas D. Kristof | Facebook.

 

[fatman17]

Op-Ed Contributor

The ‘Good War’ Isn’t Worth Fighting

By RORY STEWART

Published: November 22, 2008

London

AFGHANISTAN does not matter as much as Barack Obama thinks.

Terrorism is not the key strategic threat facing the United States. America, Britain and our allies have not created a positive stable environment in the Middle East. We have no clear strategy for dealing with China. The financial crisis is a more immediate threat to United States power and to other states; environmental catastrophe is more dangerous for the world. And even from the perspective of terrorism, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are more lethal.

President-elect Obama’s emphasis on Afghanistan and his desire to send more troops and money there is misguided. Overestimating its importance distracts us from higher priorities, creates an unhealthy dynamic with the government of Afghanistan and endangers the one thing it needs — the stability that might come from a patient, limited, long-term relationship with the international community.

We invaded intending to attack Al Qaeda and provide development assistance. We succeeded. By 2004, Afghanistan had a stable currency, millions more children in school, a better health system, an elected Parliament, no Al Qaeda and almost no Taliban. All this was achieved with only 20,000 troops and a relatively small international aid budget.

When the decision was made to increase troops in 2005, there was no insurgency. But as NATO became increasingly obsessed with transforming the country and brought in more money and troops to deal with corruption and the judiciary, warlords and criminals, insecurity in rural areas and narcotics, it failed. In fact, things got worse. These new NATO troops encountered a fresh problem — local Taliban resistance — which has drawn them into a counterinsurgency campaign.

More troops have brought military victories but they have not been able to eliminate the Taliban. They have also had a negative political impact in the conservative and nationalistic communities of the Pashtun south and allowed Taliban propaganda to portray us as a foreign military occupation. In Helmand Province, troop numbers have increased to nearly 10,000 today from just 2,000 in 2004. But no inhabitant of Helmand would say things have improved in the last four years. Mr. Obama believes that sending even more troops and money will now bring “victory” in Afghanistan. Some of this may be politically driven: a pretense of future benefits appears better than admitting a loss; and because lives are involved, no one wants to write off sunk costs.

Nevertheless, these increases are not just wasteful, they are counterproductive. The more costly we make this campaign, the more likely we are to withdraw when another crisis emerges or our attention wanders. Grand investment precipitating a sudden withdrawal repeats the “Charlie Wilson’s War” effect of 1990, when Afghanistan fell in a moment from spoiled godson to orphan, leaving bankruptcy and chaos behind.

Further, the more we give, the less influence we have over the Afghan government, which believes we need it more than it needs us. What incentive do Afghan leaders have to reform if their country is allowed to produce 92 percent of the world’s heroin and still receive $20 billion of international aid? Are they wrong to think that if they became more stable and law-abiding and wiped out the Taliban we would give them less support? That this is a protection racket where the amount of money one receives is directly proportional to one’s ability to threaten trouble?

This is certainly the experience of the more stable provinces in central Afghanistan, where leaders talk about the need to set off bombs to receive the assistance given to their wealthier but more dangerous neighbors. A more detached strategic perspective and less aid would give us more leverage.

A sudden surge of foreign troops and cash will be unhelpful and unsustainable. It would take 20 successful years to match Pakistan’s economy, educational levels, government or judiciary — and Pakistan is still not stable. Nor, for that matter, are northeastern or northwestern India, despite that nation’s great economic and political successes.

We will not be able to eliminate the Taliban from the rural areas of Afghanistan’s south, so we will have to work with Afghans to contain the insurgency instead. All this is unpleasant for Western politicians who dream of solving the fundamental problems and getting out. They will soon be tempted to give up.

It is in our interests for Afghanistan to be more stable in part because it contributes to the stability of the region, and in particular Pakistan. Well-focused, long-term assistance in which we appear a genuine partner, not a frustrated colonial master, could help Afghans achieve this goal. We will be able to create, afford and sustain such a relationship only if we put it in a broader strategic context and limit its scope.

Rory Stewart, a former British Foreign Service officer, is the author of “The Places in Between” and “The Prince of the Marshes.”

 

[fatman17]

Op-Ed Contributor | Transitions
A Wartime Presidency, on Two Fronts

By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Published: November 22, 2008
Washington

A series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president.

BARACK OBAMA will take office having campaigned that he would fight the war on terrorism by focusing on winning the war in Afghanistan and eliminating Al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s sanctuary in Pakistan. He recognizes that these two countries have become the center of Al Qaeda’s activities and of the violent Islamist extremism that challenges the real values of Islam. He also promised he would find the best way to withdraw from Iraq, and to create a new balance of security in the Persian Gulf.

He has less than two months to go from broad rhetoric to concrete day-to-day action. On Jan. 20, he will take over at a pivotal point in negotiating Iraq’s status of force agreement with the United States, in the middle of a winter military campaign in Afghanistan, and during a political, security and economic crisis in Pakistan. None of these issues will wait for America to deal with its financial problems. And no one involved believes that the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s northern territories can be fully won, or even transferred to Afghan and Pakistani hands, by even the end of President Obama’s first term. For at least the next two to three years, the war will intensify, and virtually all of the additional burden will be borne by the United States.

Leaks of a new National Intelligence Estimate have shown that we are now losing the war for several reasons: a lack of Afghan competence; a half-hearted Pakistani commitment to the fight; a shortage of American, NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops; too few aid workers; and nation-building programs that were designed for peacetime and are rife with inefficiency and fraud. This is why Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and other military leaders have called for 20,000 to 25,000 more troops and warned that even those reinforcements may not be adequate.

Even with a potential drawdown in Iraq, the military is being stretched ever thinner. The Army already extends the deployment of troops beyond their commitments, and it and the Marine Corps may well find it impossible to meet their goals for shortening deployment cycles. As things stand, it will almost certainly take until 2011 to bring enough military advisers into Afghanistan to train its army and police forces to the level where locals can replace international troops. And with increasing terrorist attacks on non-governmental groups, many aid workers are being forced to leave the country.

The Afghan and Pakistani economies have effectively collapsed, and Afghans face food shortages this winter. Monthly spending on operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will likely rise to as much as $5 billion, from around $2 billion today, or we will face defeat.

Even if the United States fully withdraws from Iraq in 2011, as Mr. Obama and the Iraqi government say they would like, we will remain on something very like a war footing there throughout the next presidency. While the combat burden on our forces will decline, withdrawal will be as costly as fighting. It will take large amounts of luck (and patient American prodding) for the Iraqi government to move toward real political accommodation while avoiding new explosions of ethnic and sectarian violence.

Even with progress on those fronts, we will have to withdraw while still helping to win a war, contain internal violence, limit Iranian influence and counter its nuclear program, create effective Iraqi security forces, and help Iraq improve its governance. Not a full war perhaps, but at least a quarter war in terms of continuing strains on our military and budget.

Moreover, the best case for the Iraq war means coming to grips with the legacy of the worst secretary of defense in American history, Donald Rumsfeld. In spite of recent progress under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Mr. Rumsfeld’s inability to manage any key aspect of defense modernization has left the Obama administration a legacy of unfunded and expensive new trade-offs between replacing combat-worn equipment, repairing and rehabilitating huge amounts of weapons and equipment, and supplying our forces with new, improved equipment.

At best, President Obama will have to conduct the equivalent of one-and-a-quarter wars throughout his first term. At worst? The outside chance of war with Iran as well.

Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.